THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: DIPLOMACY; NATO Agrees to Expansion of Forces Training Soldiers in Iraq

By JOEL BRINKLEY

Published: December 10, 2004

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed Thursday to increase its forces training soldiers in Baghdad, but six member countries refused to take part, prompting expressions of disappointment and irritation from NATO's leadership and the United States.

''There is a clear agreement to support Iraq on its way to permanent security and stability,'' Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general, said. But he added: ''With an international integrated military staff, that means all officers should be able to participate. All of the NATO allies should send people to participate in the operation.''

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was more direct.

''When it comes time to perform a mission,'' he said at a news conference, ''it seems to us to be quite awkward for suddenly members in that international staff to say, ''I'm unable to go because of this national caveat or national exception.'''

NATO will expand the training staff in Baghdad from 60 officers to 300 under the pact, which NATO had agreed to in outline in September as part of efforts to field more Iraqi security forces to help ensure safe elections in January. The 60 trainers are from 10 countries, including the United States and Britain.

Mr. de Hoop Scheffer said Poland, Hungary and the Netherlands had agreed to contribute to the enlarged force. Their contingents, will not be enough, and other countries have yet to pledge forces. The six that refused are France, Germany, Belgium, Greece, Spain and Luxembourg.

A senior American official acknowledged that their refusal presented a serious problem. Germans, for example, make up a significant portion of the officers on NATO's international command staff.

Despite a spirited debate over lunch among the foreign ministers, Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, insisted that his country would stand firm on its position.

''We will send no German soldiers to Iraq,'' he said. Germany and other countries that strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq have expressed concerns that the training mission could grow into a combat operation.

NATO officials also tried to get member countries to supply more troops to Afghanistan so that NATO could fulfill an American request to expand its operation into its western provinces, but none agreed. Some foreign ministers said their countries were considering it.

The NATO contingent trains senior Iraqi military officers inside the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. Later this year, under an American plan also approved Thursday, the training will be moved to an even more heavily fortified training center to be built just outside Baghdad.

Mr. Powell said the nations refusing to participate in the mission are ''hurting the credibility and the cohesion of such an international staff or organization,'' adding, ''we think it is a problem, and we had a pretty good discussion of it at our lunch.''

Still, Mr. Powell said, ''the position of some of the nations that are not willing to have their troops go to Iraq, even if they are on an international staff, is that, at least as they see it, they thought they had made it clear previously.''

Mr. Fischer made the same point, saying ''the German position was made clear in Istanbul,'' where NATO held a summit meeting in June and agreed on the Iraq training mission.

The NATO meeting was Mr. Powell's last as secretary of state, and the ministers found many ways to say goodbye to him.

Mr. Fischer gave Mr. Powell a case and a keg of beer, and Mr. Powell reminisced: ''I expressed my admiration for German flip-top beer one day, the kind with the little tops that pop off. And Joschka sent me a case, and I enjoyed it very much.

''The next time I saw him, since he's a member of the Greens Party, I gave him the empties back.''